that nobleness was not obliging her. She was
conducted to a drawing-room, which, though not in her style, showed every
mark of fastidious elegance. Thinking, 'Too much taste--too many
knick-knacks,' she saw in an old lacquer-framed mirror the figure of a
girl coming in from the verandah. Clothed in white, and holding some
white roses in her hand, she had, reflected in that silvery-grey pool of
glass, a vision-like appearance, as if a pretty ghost had come out of the
green garden.

"How do you do?" said June, turning round. "I'm a cousin of your
father's."

"Oh, yes; I saw you in that confectioner's."

"With my young stepbrother. Is your father in?"

"He will be directly. He's only gone for a little walk."

June slightly narrowed her blue eyes, and lifted her decided chin.

"Your name's Fleur, isn't it? I've heard of you from Holly. What do you
think of Jon?"

The girl lifted the roses in her hand, looked at them, and answered
calmly:

"He's quite a nice boy."

"Not a bit like Holly or me, is he?"

"Not a bit."

'She's cool,' thought June.

And suddenly the girl said: "I wish you'd tell me why our families don't
get on?"

Confronted with the question she had advised her father to answer, June
was silent; whether because this girl was trying to get something out of
her, or simply because what one would do theoretically is not always what
one will do when it comes to the point.

"You know," said the girl, "the surest way to make people find out the
worst is to keep them ignorant. My father's told me it was a quarrel
about property. But I don't believe it; we've both got heaps. They
wouldn't have been so bourgeois as all that."

June flushed. The word applied to her grandfather and father offended
her.

"My grandfather," she said, "was very generous, and my father is, too;
neither of them was in the least bourgeois."

"Well, what was it then?" repeated the girl: Conscious that this young
Forsyte meant having what she wanted, June at once determined to prevent
her, and to get something for herself instead.

"Why do you want to know?"

The girl smelled at her roses. "I only want to know because they won't
tell me."

"Well, it was about property, but there's more than one kind."

"That makes it worse. Now I really must know."

June's small and resolute face quivered. She was wearing a round cap,
and her hair had fluffed out under it. She looked quite young at that
moment, rejuvena